A meteor expertly streaked across the night sky over Portugal and Spain, illuminating the heavens with a mesmerizing blue-green fireball.
The European Space Agency (ESA) expertly captured a fireball in Caceres, Spain, late on May 18. ESA has confirmed that the fragment of a comet was traveling at an impressive speed of about 160,000 kilometers per hour (44 km per second). The meteor likely disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of approximately 60 kilometers.
Social media users posted numerous images of the fireball. Colin Rugg in X wrote:
This is incredible. The flash was visible for hundreds of kilometers. Some reports say it may have landed near Castro Dairi.
Shooting stars are fragments of material from asteroids, comets or other planets that gracefully make their way into the Earth’s atmosphere. When magnesium burns, it produces a vibrant blue-green flash, a characteristic often seen in meteorites like pallasites.
☄️😍 ESA’s fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain, spotted this stunning meteor last night!
Our Planetary Defence Office are currently analysing the size and trajectory of the object to assess the chance that any material made it to the surface.
Credit: ESA/PDO/AMS82 – AllSky7 pic.twitter.com/gSU4unncQW
— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) May 19, 2024
Despite the enigmatic origins of pallasites, they have the potential to shed light on the formation of planets within our solar system. Scientists have yet to confirm if this meteorite made it to Earth, but the chances of that happening are slim.
